Communication

Detailed Description

DIY currently supports two communication patterns: neighborhood exchange and global reduction. Additional lightweight collectives can be executed over the communication proxy of the above patterns.

Neighborhood Exchange

The basic building block of communication is the neighborhood. This is a local collection of edges in a communication graph from the current block to other blocks; information is exchanged over these edges. In DIY, the communication proxy is the object that encapsulates the neighborhood. The communication proxy includes the link, which is the collection of edges to the neighboring blocks. This size of the link is the number of edges. In the communication proxy, link->target[i] is the block connected to the ith edge. Edges can be added or removed dynamically. Data can be enqueued to and dequeued from any target in the link as desired, and then all enqueued data are exchanged over the link in one step.

Global Reduction

DIY supports general reductions to implement complex global operations over blocks. These reductions are general-purpose (any global communication pattern can be implemented); they operate over blocks, which cycle in and out of core as necessary; the operations are (multi-)threaded automatically using the same mechanism as foreach(). Although any global communication can be expressed using the reduction mechanism, all the reductions included in DIY operate in rounds over a k-ary reduction tree. The value of k used in each round can vary, but if it's fixed, the number of rounds is log_k(nblocks).

The following patterns are currently available.

• merge-reduce
  • create diy::RegularMergePartners
  • call diy::reduce
  • see the example here
• swap-reduce
  • create diy::RegularSwapPartners
  • call diy::reduce
  • see the example here
• all-reduce
  • create diy::RegularAllReducePartners
  • call diy::reduce
• all-to-all
  • call diy:all_to_all
  • see the example here

Proxy Collectives

When a lightweight reduction needs to be mixed into an existing pattern such as a neighborhood exchange, DIY has a mechanism for this. An example is a neighbor exchange that must iterate until the collective result indicates it is time to terminate (as in particle tracing in rounds until no block has any more work to do). The underlying mechanism works as follows.

• The input values from each block are pushed to a vector of inputs for the process.
• The corresponding MPI collective is called by the process.
• The reduced results are redistributed to the process' blocks.

The inputs are pushed by calling all_reduce from each block, and the outputs are popped by calling get from each block. The collective mechanism compares with the above reductions as follows:

• It is a simple member function of the communication proxy that is piggybacked onto the underlying proxy, not a completely new pattern using k-ary reductions (unlike above).
• The reduction works per block and can be out of core (as above) because it uses the underlying proxy.
• The operator is a simple predefined macro (unlike above). The following operators are available: maximum<T>, minimum<T>, std::plus<T>, std::multiplies<T>, std::logical_and<T>, and std::logical_or<T>.
• The result retrieved using the get function, not dequeue (unlike above)
• Currently, all_reduce is the only collective available.

A code snippet is below. The complete example is here

void foo(void* b_,                             // local block
         const diy::Master::ProxyWithLink& cp, // communication proxy
         void*)                                // user-defined additional arguments
{

  ...

  cp.all_reduce(value, std::plus<int>());      // local value being reduced
}

void bar(void* b_,                             // local block
         const diy::Master::ProxyWithLink& cp, // communication proxy
         void*)                                // user-defined additional arguments
{

  int total = cp.get<int>();                   // result of the reduction

  ...
}

int main(int argc, char**argv)
{

  ...

  master.foreach(&foo);
  master.exchange();
  master.foreach(&bar);
}

Classes
struct	diy::RegularAllReducePartners
	Allreduce (reduction with results broadcasted to all blocks) is implemented as two merge reductions, with incoming and outgoing items swapped in second one. Ie, follows merge reduction up and down the merge tree. More...
struct	diy::RegularBroadcastPartners
	Partners for broadcast. More...
struct	diy::RegularMergePartners
	Partners for merge-reduce. More...
struct	diy::RegularSwapPartners
	Partners for swap-reduce. More...

Functions
template<class T , class Op >
void	diy::Master::Proxy::all_reduce (const T &in, Op op) const
	Post an all-reduce collective using an existing communication proxy. Available operators are: maximum<T>, minimum<T>, std::plus<T>, std::multiplies<T>, std::logical_and<T>, and std::logical_or<T>. More...
template<class T >
T	diy::Master::Proxy::read () const
	Return the result of a proxy collective without popping it off the collectives list (same result would be returned multiple times). The list can be cleared with collectives()->clear().
template<class T >
T	diy::Master::Proxy::get () const
	Return the result of a proxy collective; result is popped off the collectives list.
CollectivesList *	diy::Master::Proxy::collectives () const
	Return the list of proxy collectives (values and operations)
template<class Op >
void	diy::all_to_all (Master &master, const Assigner &assigner, const Op &op, int k=2)
	all to all reduction More...
template<class Reduce , class Partners , class Skip >
void	diy::reduce (Master &master, const Assigner &assigner, const Partners &partners, const Reduce &reduce, const Skip &skip)
	Implementation of the reduce communication pattern (includes swap-reduce, merge-reduce, and any other global communication). More...
template<class Reduce , class Partners >
void	diy::reduce (Master &master, const Assigner &assigner, const Partners &partners, const Reduce &reducer)
	Implementation of the reduce communication pattern (includes swap-reduce, merge-reduce, and any other global communication). More...

Function Documentation

template<class T , class Op >

void diy::Master::Proxy::all_reduce ( const T &  in, Op  op  ) const

inline

Post an all-reduce collective using an existing communication proxy. Available operators are: maximum<T>, minimum<T>, std::plus<T>, std::multiplies<T>, std::logical_and<T>, and std::logical_or<T>.

Parameters

in	local value being reduced
op	operator

Examples:

reduce/kd-tree.cpp, reduce/sort.cpp, simple/simple.cpp, and simple/until-done.cpp.

template<class Op >

void diy::all_to_all	(	Master &	master,
		const Assigner &	assigner,
		const Op &	op,
		int	k = 2
	)

all to all reduction

Parameters

master	block owner
assigner	global block locator (maps gid to proc)
op	user-defined operation called to enqueue and dequeue items
k	reduction fanout

Examples:

reduce/all-done.cpp, reduce/all-to-all.cpp, and reduce/kd-tree.cpp.

template<class Reduce , class Partners , class Skip >

void diy::reduce	(	Master &	master,
		const Assigner &	assigner,
		const Partners &	partners,
		const Reduce &	reduce,
		const Skip &	skip
	)

Implementation of the reduce communication pattern (includes swap-reduce, merge-reduce, and any other global communication).

Parameters

master	master object
assigner	assigner object
partners	partners object
reduce	reduction callback function
skip	object determining whether a block should be skipped

Examples:

reduce/merge-reduce.cpp, reduce/sort.cpp, and reduce/swap-reduce.cpp.

template<class Reduce , class Partners >

void diy::reduce	(	Master &	master,
		const Assigner &	assigner,
		const Partners &	partners,
		const Reduce &	reducer
	)

Implementation of the reduce communication pattern (includes swap-reduce, merge-reduce, and any other global communication).

Parameters

master	master object
assigner	assigner object
partners	partners object
reducer	reduction callback function